ABSTRACT
I started to consider therapeutic regression during a difficult period in the analysis of a patient who I intuited was regressed, and not in a state of what some call “psychic retreat”. My researches reminded me of old battles. During the Controversial Discussions (King & Steiner, 1991), for example, Ernest Jones recognized it as a potentially explosive concept when he described “this quarrel-provoking word” (p. 323). Neither the adherents of the “nurture regression” school nor those of the “psychic retreat” school resolved the problem. However, Winnicott’s linking regression with primary narcissism seemed to me to provide a sound theoretical underpinning for a technique that recognizes the therapeutic value of regression, while avoiding the pitfall of failing to address the destructiveness inherent in the discovery of the object’s otherness.
